I was reading the last few chapters last night to refresh myself on how it ended, and during the “King’s Cross” episode, when dead-Dumbledore and Harry have their man-to-man talk after Voldemort “kills” Harry, there’s a flayed, pathetic, whimpering, suffering creature under one of the chairs in the station. Harry repeatedly asks what it is, but Dumbledore puts him off, saying things like “It’s something beyond the help of either of us,” and “Don’t waste pity on the dead, Harry.”
Sorry, it may be perfectly obvious, but since I hadn’t read the story in a while, and I only read the last few pages last night, it left me a-scratchin’ my head.
OK, yeah. I sort of figured it had to be connected to Voldy somehow, but the specifics of why it was there at that particular time were eluding me. I guess since the entire episode took place in Harry’s head (or soul), it had to be in there somehow, huh?
That was my interpretation. Although, this is just after the Horcrux/bit of Voldy’s soul inside Harry has been destroyed, right? Hey, it works emotionally, let’s not get too picky with the logic.
Don’t recall exactly (and too lazy to look it up), but I got the impression that the main thing was that the Horcrux, destroyed or not, was no longer part of Harry. The inference being that whichever choice he made — catch a train and move on, or return to Hogwarts — it wouldn’t be going with him.
that was the state of tom riddle’s soul; the part that he still retained. he had so damaged it that it was a wretched creature. that is the form he will have in eternity once he passes.
harry in the final showdown mentions that he has seen what is ahead for riddle and it is not pretty.
I re-read parts of Goblet of Fire a little while ago, and it occurred to me that the “baby Voldemort” from the beginning of that book resembles the thing under the bench in the end of Deathly Hallows. I don’t recall if the same words are used in the descriptions, but I thought it was at least an interesting connection to an earlier book in the series.
That’s the impression I got too, and it struck me as distressingly cold that Dumbledore advised Harry to ignore it. I know it was Tom Riddle, and therefore evil, but it was suffering, and they’re supposed to be the good guys…I really wanted Harry to ignore Dumbledore, and offer it what little comfort he could (even if that meant snuffing it out so it wouldn’t hurt any more).
I guess, since it was a soul, it couldn’t be “snuffed out”. After all, it seems like Riddle had tried pretty hard for most of his life (both natural and unnatural) to get rid of it, but only succeeded in eroding it.
Dumbledore didn’t tell Harry to ignore it out of callousness, but because there was quite simply nothing that Harry could do. He couldn’t (as in, it wasn’t possible) offer it any comfort at all.
IIRC, as Harry’s waking up he hears one of the Death Eaters asking if Voldemort is okay, because he’d just collapsed on the ground after zapping Harry. So it seems to me like Voldemort got pulled in to the train station after Harry. Backlash of the spell breaking or something. So it makes perfect sense for mutilated soul creature to be there with them.
It’s a piece of Voldemort’s soul, it can’t be snuffed out.
In the book, Voldemort is knocked to the ground when he tries to kill Harry and this is probably because he destroyed a piece of himself in the process.